Water
by ShadowMayne
Summary: My version of what happened the day she met the Chairman. Based more on the movie. One Shot.


**Water **

The monotony of life was something I was used to. Day in, day out, I did what was expected of me. In my dreams, I tried to escape.

I could fly over rooftops, or under bridges, I would run down country lanes laughing to the clear sky. At least, in the beginning I did. As the days slipped by the clear blue sky darkened, the rooftops crowded together and the bridges were inches away from the rushing storm. Hope trickled away, like water from my hands.

Sleep was no longer the escape I so craved. Torment followed me where ever I wondered, in sad sinister cloaks. I was melting, buckling under pressure, hidden behind the obedient mask of a girl.

Was I just to be their slave? Was I meant to for nothing? I did not know then. I knew nothing of my destiny. I knew only what I had, the bitter betrayal of my life, leaving me here. I longed for my sister and thought of her often. My life as a servant, a slave, droned on. Colours faded to grey behind the everlasting rain.

Every night I opened doors and prayed that someone had come to save me, but it was not to be, not yet.

They sent me out, and I gladly left each morning, afraid of returning to find another man fleeing the building, afraid of practicing calligraphy on a kimono once more. I was afraid, always. I had made enemies and they haunted my steps, waiting for me to stumble again.

I was afraid to lie on the floor and feel the stick hit my raw flesh with no mercy. Father once said I must understand what is to be alone, to feel pain. He said it will guide me when I have no hope so that I might appreciate the sunrise after darkness.

What I did not understand was why I must feel that pain, why I was doomed to walk those roads everyday as a disgrace. Knowing I could never be a geisha, knowing I could never escape home, trapped here in the labyrinth of the present with no future and no past.

I sat on the bridge watching the water make its path down along the rocks. If mother was right when she said I was water, if everyone who ever ventured to look into my eyes, if they were right, then why could I not melt into the rocks and run into the sea? The sound was soothing, distracting. I followed a leaf in the water as it floated its way to somewhere more beautiful than here.

That day was the first day a stranger ever stopped and really looked at me. The first time someone took me for what I was. He did not see a little slave girl, sitting and waiting for something that was destined never to come, he saw a child with the world at her feet and a heavy heart.

He bent to my level, took my hands in his and he taught me the one thing that made my life forever, he taught me how to hope.

It was the kind of hope that brightened the dark sky, and lifted my higher than the stormy tempest at my feet.

In that moment I stopped being the slave of the other Geisha, I was striving for a life that I would dictate, and no other would command.

I learned his name and remembered his kindness, for they were two things that kept me up that night, sitting by the window dreaming of a better world, a better life. Dreams were not my only escape now, I had plans and hopes. I could see my future as something more than this, something that was within my grasp if I could just stretch a little further.

Mother said I was like water and finally I understood. I had sat there wishing I could flow away, when what I needed to do was stop and wait for the rain to fall and carry me where it would.

I thought of my sister that night, wondering where she was. Had she really left without me? Had she found a better life or was she standing in the crowds waiting for me, knowing I'll never come?

I sat alone in the cold breeze, letting the rain wash into my hair. I decided then to look for my sister in every face I saw, and to dedicate every step I took to the man who helped me.

I wish the Chairman could have seen me the next morning. I walked with a lighter air, with brighter eyes. The rain washed away my fears and in return I filled with hope.

I made a new life, a life I wanted nothing more than Chairman to be a part of.

FIN

I don't know why I wrote this, I was bored I guess. Memoirs of a Geisha really touched me so I felt I needed to put my little tribute to it.

Please review.


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